Natural Mage (Magical Mayhem #2)(103)

Biting my lip, I knocked on Emery’s window. “Get out.” I rapped harder.

“See? Right now you’re wearing the bullying hat. Callie wears that most of the time. After this, though, I bet Emery will wear that hat, if he can learn how to say no to you. Or…I guess guys get to be called commanding. Women always get the short end of the stick. But clearly you need to wear it right now, because he turned chicken.” She made sounds like a chicken, loud enough that I knew he heard.

I couldn’t help laughing. “We’re about to be killed. Do you take nothing seriously?”

“Oh, honey,” she said with attitude. She was probably mimicking someone, but I didn’t know who. “We’re not going to be killed. Let’s get these tattletale spells down, and I’ll tell you exactly what we’re going to do.”

It took me a few moments to get Emery out of the car, plus a whopping ten minutes to get him into the warehouse. I finally ended up punching him in the face. I’d tried everything else, and Reagan had advised me to jar him out of it, so I did.

I was pretty sure he could’ve easily dodged or blocked my punch. My heart wasn’t really in it. But he’d let it hit. Probably so I’d hurt my hand.

Which I did. He had some sharp cheekbones, and I had some (evidently) weak knuckles.

A moment later, his eyes had changed and fierce determination had taken over. In other words, the normal, confident problem-solver Emery. I got to go back to coasting. Which gave me a stronger appreciation for Dizzy’s near-constant state of happiness.

Now we stood at the back area of the warehouse beside a long table with a plethora of ingredients organized across its surface. It reminded me of Darius’s warehouse in Seattle, where we’d done a few spells to sell to him.

“When did you set this up?” I asked, looking over everything. The collection of power stones was a little lacking, but I had a pretty good collection with me.

“I called it in last night while I was waiting for Darius,” Reagan said. “I figured we could all work together on some really tight spells, like that ward, and then create an arsenal of casings to keep at the house. We’ll have to raincheck that, of course. We need quick, nitty-gritty spells. Also…” She put her hands on her hips as she examined the various baskets of casings collected at the end of the table. “We might need to special order some larger, more durable casings in the future. I have a feeling these won’t be enough for what I am thinking.”

“We put a powerful spell into two casings,” I said, remembering working with Emery in Seattle.

Reagan turned on me, and anger crossed her face. “That secret-keeping jerk. You see? Every time I think we’re being open with each other, that elder has something up his sleeve. He implied Emery did that spell. He didn’t mention you at all. Which I find a little suspicious, since, you know, I knew you first.” She frowned, pausing for another beat, before wiping it away with her hand. “Whatever. That doesn’t matter right now. He’s got plans. Fine. So do I. I don’t understand those plans, because your mother is like all other Seers, but I have them. And I won’t be spilling. He can suck it.”

“A very odd relationship,” I muttered.

Reagan ignored my remark. “That spell you two did was in two casings. An even more complex spell might take three or four. How the hell can you quickly grab out four casings from among many, sort through them for the order, and then release them all while in the heat of battle? No, that’s not going to work. Well, for now, it probably has to. Okay, here’s what we need…”

Reagan spent the next few minutes listing off the types of spells we’d ideally have ready for the battle ahead. Everything from attack to defense to marvels of nature. Then she described the more important and pressing matter of creating gigantic walls to keep onlookers from seeing the massive battle. We were supposed to create a Not-So-Great Wall of China to basically run along the outskirts of the land surrounding the warehouse, though she wouldn’t say why it needed to be so massive.

Then we needed to wander through the fields and make sure there weren’t any traps and magical pitfalls that had been planted prior to our arrival.

As she was winding down, her phone rang.

“Red.” She tapped the face of the phone and put it to her ear. “Hello?”

Emery plucked at my sleeve before looking over the organic offerings. “Let’s focus on those walls first. They’ll need to be strong and magical, and they’ll need to be in casings. We don’t want them to know we’re essentially trying to lock them in…until we lock them in.”

“Locking in eighty people to our three.” A tremor rolled through my body, begging me to do what he’d suggested in the beginning. Run!



Two hours later, I was jarred out of my extreme focus. A warning shook my bones. My teeth rattled.

I backed away from the elaborate spell I was working on, letting it dissipate and drift into space. Emery straightened up next to me, his body going taut. The magic around us instantly changed from busied loops of beautiful designs, to rolling, boiling bubbles of pure magic and energy.

Reagan glanced over from what she was doing on the other side of the warehouse. Magic draped across the walls in patterns that barely made sense to my eye. A little blurry, sometimes glowing and glittering in places, the weaves seemed to shift into tangible things—walls and chairs and draping vines—made up of moving, surging, and pulsing colors. A high gloss covered the whole thing, and the intent felt majestic.